Eating: Mealtimes at Home and Abroad

Excerpted from
Eating, Sleeping, and Getting Up: How to Stop the Daily Battles with Your Child
By Carolyn Crowder

There seems to be a fairly new parenting phenomenon in many homes. Children dictate the how, when, what, and where of mealtimes. Adults routinely take turns acting as short-order cooks, fixing two and sometimes three different meals at a time so that their finicky children will find something to their liking on their plates.

Children are not expected to sit down at the table and eat the meal that is placed before them at specific hours of the day. Instead, they have been taught that if they do not want to eat what mom puts on the table, they need only sulk or complain and, voila!, something else will appear.

What is going on here? Why would a harried young mother put herself through the additional work of preparing special meals for her children as if she had all the time in the world at her disposal? And, taking this reasoning a step further, why, even if she did have ample time, would she consider it a good idea to cater to her children's unreasonable demands?

To answer that question, we must look at many different variables. First, mom, like many parents, has made a decision about how her children will be raised. Unfortunately, she has made that decision from a position of weakness, not of strength. Perhaps in her own past, she was made to eat whatever was put on the table and plenty of it. Now, whether consciously or unconsciously, she has determined that her children will never have to sit at a table choking down food they do not like because she is bigger and stronger than they are and can make them eat.

Acting not as a parent charged with providing nourishment for growing children but as a child rebelling against her own parents and their mealtime methodologies, this mom has trained her children to act like little tyrants at the table (if they are even sitting at the table!).

Parents must examine for themselves how they were raised and the decisions they have made about parenting based on their own experiences as children. They must investigate their behavior as children and the responses they witnessed from their own parents. All these factors provide clues that will help parents understand why they respond the way they do. This is a very important step in effecting change.

If we do not know why we do things, we cannot have much hope of altering them for the better. In order to change first ourselves and then influence change in our children's behavior, we need some insights into how and why we do certain things in certain ways.

As you engage in this process, you will have many of those "light bulb" moments where you begin to realize just what kinds of influences have formed and shaped your responses to your children. And you will also get a sense of whether or not these influences accurately reflect how you feel about things or the way that others think you should feel. This is a fundamental exercise for those of you who really want a deeper understanding of yourselves and your behaviors.

Consider, for example, that when parents do not act wisely with their own children, it is often because they are reacting based on something that was done to them and that has no bearing on what is the best training for their own children. They may still be rebelling, saying, "My parents did thus and such, and I will never do that to my children," instead of asking, "What things do my children need to learn from me in order to grow up to be healthy, happy, compassionate, and productive citizens?"

You do not need a list of the shortcomings of these old approaches for dealing with children, but it is essential to think for a moment about the conflict within your own family at specific times of the day, which are often centered around mealtimes. When properly used, these particular times of day need not split a family apart.

Instead, they can provide a sound foundation for growth and development by giving parents opportunities for educating and training children in such vital areas as communication, manners, sharing, contribution, and cooperation within the family.

Yes, you are tired. Yes, your children are overextended. Yes, cooking a good meal takes time and energy. You may even think it is easier to give them what they want when they want it because you have become accustomed to their whining, complaining, and refusals to eat what you put in front of them. If they are parked in front of the television with snack foods for meals because you cannot get them to join you for a real meal, you are losing all of these wonderful opportunities to:

• talk, visit, and relax with them during nonstressful times
• learn what they are thinking, doing, feeling
• work with them to learn to prepare meals
• teach them skills they will need as adults
• teach them about nutrition and how to feed themselves properly
• enlist their aid in tidying up after meals
• give them positive ways to contribute and help you
• enjoy their company and share things with them
• spend some cooperative time together that instills a sense of belonging

What parents also do not realize is that they are helping set up the dynamics for major power struggles in all areas when they cave in over meals and related activities. We must eat to live. No one will argue this point. However, the fact that you must feed your children allows them to use mealtimes as a chance to fight you for power and negative attention within the family.

That is why it is so important to look on mealtimes as a means of opening the door to positive modes of belonging. Since you, the parent, are the family leader, you can orchestrate the changes that will make mealtimes opportunities for cooperation rather than arenas of conflict.

It is really a very simple equation, and once you understand it, you can begin changing things. Responsible parenting requires that you provide nutritious food at specific times of each day. The only thing children have to do in order to make mealtimes the most upsetting times of the day is to refuse to eat. Since mealtimes occur more frequently throughout the day than other activities, eating becomes the most common area of conflict between parents and their children.

Children learn very early that their refusal to cat prompts certain responses from their parents. Good parents cannot let their children go without food, right? If children use their power and turn their noses up at the roasted chicken and green vegetables, they may be able to get their parents (after they have ranted and raved first) to offer them their favorite things like hot dogs and potato chips. Keep in mind the issue is not the chicken per se, the issue is the use of power to get a negative reaction from the parents.

Children are very smart when it comes to parental concerns over whether or not they eat. They know that when push comes to shove most parents will agree that it is better for children who are refusing the prepared meal to at least eat something, be it pizza, snack food, or, occasionally, even dessert.

It is very rare these days to find children thinking they had better eat what mom and dad have put on the table at specified mealtimes because otherwise they will have to go hungry until the next meal is served. But suppose that were the case?